mortgages

Quite a punchy speech from the Fed Chairman, especially the conclusion, which suggests big support ahead for housing: In this regard, reducing the number of preventable foreclosures would not only help families stay in their homes, it…

The Treasury Department is considering a plan to halt the slide in home prices that would lower mortgage rates using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The plan could reduce rates for newly issued loans to as low as 4.5%. Slowly, but surely, the…

Below is a chart of variable rate loan applications as per cent of total. This can be looked at from a contrary opinion point of view, that is people are afraid of variable rate loans after they got burned on the upside in the last…

Today the Nationwide released their monthly UK-wide figures on house prices and the numbers were better. House prices fell 0.4% in the last month, bringing the annual fall to 13.9%, down from 14.6% in October. Nevertheless, this is the…

The latest trend in the U.S. housing market is the move of problem loans from the subprime category and into Alt-A and prime mortgages. We have been sounding the alarm bells on this since about June. See the related posts below. However,…

The United States had been living beyond its means for a very long time before the credit crisis finally hit. The truth of the matter is that U.S. monetary and fiscal policy rewarded risk-taking and leverage at the expense of prudence and…

Apparently, John McCain did even worse than I thought in last night's debate. He and Barack Obama both failed to present a step-by-step plan as to what they were going to do about America's banking crisis. They both merely rehashed old…

Connecticut-based Clayton Homes, now owned by Berkshire Hathaway and called Clayton Holdings, (not to be confused with Clayton Homes, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway)*, has warned that Subprime and Alt-A delinquencies in the U.S. are…

This morning Chris Whalen made some comments on CNBC that hit the nail on the head regarding the U.S. banking crisis: there is a huge wave of old-fashioned loan losses coming down the pike. The writedowns we have seen to date are largely…

As Hank Paulson looks to push through his Economic Patriot Act, it bears remembering that just a few months ago he saw Covered Bonds as a potential solution to U.S. problems with declining home prices. They are not the solution. This…